In this weeks lecture with Paul we cover all thing content design and we covered:
- Everything is Content
- Brand Dictionaries
- User Journey Map
- Touchpoints
- Lessons from Trailblazers
Seen a lot of proliferation of roles…
- Content Designer
- Content Strategist
- Copywriter
- All content needs to be well crafted.
- Our roles are increasingly content focused – Developing content design, establishing content strategy, copywriting, writing and editing.
The four main types of content in web/digital design include:
- Text
- Imagery
- Video
- Data
Text –
Text typecally cover most if not all of web content which means it is a crucial area of digital design to get right. Paul demonstrated to us that a mock up copy of text using ‘Lorem Ipsum’ isn’t serving any purpose when wanting to demonstrate what a completed service or project is going to provide meaning that it is important that content is provided and thought through from the beginning of the design process.
Paul took us through then some of the Digital Service Standards that have been site that available in gov.org and explained to us the importance of thinking like our users in order to meet their needs and understanding fully what they would be wanting from the service we are able to produce for them. I went through the points of the Gov.org website and broke them down further for me to understand more clearly in detail what each point means.
Digital Service Standard – Government Digital Design Principles
- Government Digital service
- Start with needs – Identify user needs to be aware of what needs build. Research, Analyse Data and talking to potential users all lead to more accurate results creating a more usable service. Be aware that not everything that is ask for is needed.
- Do less – You can only do what you can do. If something works then this should be kept this way without reinventing and switching things up. “If its not broke don’t fix it”. This is in regards to building platforms, registering, providing resources, linking networks.
- Design with data – We can learn best by understanding and being conscious of the world around us and the behaviours of others by going out to look for existing services. The information that is gathering will push the knowledge for decision making that is best for your users. Prototyping and user testing with feedback with actual users of your service will prompt the needs response. Statistics and gathered data is the discovery of interpretation and com munition of your users patterns in data and should be build into the service as these are essential.
- Do the hard work to make it simple – It is easier to make something look simple than it is to use, especially when you are aiming to reach a range of users.
- Iterate. Then iterate again – “Start small iterate wildly”. Start with a minimum viable product, test with users, move to alpha then to beta to live adding feature and editing changes to improve the look and overall concept of design based on gathered feedback. Doing so will reduce the risk of failure and not meeting your users needs. – Alpha is the phase of realise cycle in terms of software testing. Development test the software using white-box techniques. Beta is the second phase of development when the software is coming to completion but still has issues and problem solving to take place.
- Build for inclusion – Its crucial in design that you are aware that you are designing for all and ensuring that your every area of your design has been thought through to become accessible, legible, readable and inclusive for every potential users. You build for needs and not just solely the ones that are going to use the service or product.
- Understand context – You design to connect with your users not for technology or screens and how to do this is through how they access and use the service or product. It’s important to know how your user access your service or product in terms of how they access content via mobile, social media or other tools such as desktop.
- Build digital services, not websites – We should focus on creating a serves thats job is to provide help for our users as it is our job to uncover the needs of users and from this build a service that define those discovered needs.
- Be consistent, not uniform – It crucial in all design aspects that we use the same langue and the same design patters and this will help our users feel familiar with out services that we are providing for example the home button is traditionally presented by an icon of a house.
- Make things open: it makes things better – Sharing what we are doing allows our work to be opened to those that we might not have specifically thought of designing for. So by sharing aspect of our work opens us up to crucial feedback that would help benefit us and our services.
I enjoyed getting to research these points and discovering the important ways to present content to allow our users to visualise it and feel they are getting the most out of what we are creating.
Peak-End Rule
People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.
Awareness:
- We should aim to be aware of the most intense points and the final moments of the user journey.
- Being aware of the moments when your service is most helpful, valuable or entertaining and design to delight the end user.
- Users remember more negative experience in comparison to positive ones and having the awareness of the will push you to create the preface service to meet their needs to create the best and most positive experience for them.
Journey Mapping – Everything’s a journey
A journey map is a visulation of the process that a person goes through order to accomplish a goal.
A customer journey map is a story designed to provide insights into the customer’s journey. It is not designed to represent a 100% real experience with all its nuances.
User Journey Maps will allow me to illustrate the user flow when it comes to the product or service in production . Starting from initial contact or discovery straight through to long term loyalty. Using these will allow me to identify key interactions and touch points that take place with the product or service and allows me to see what the customers goals, motivations and steps are throughout the process.
Example points to cover:
- Feelings
- User activity
- User goals
- Opportunities
Developing your own journey maps
Points to cover:
- What is the solution to the problem
- 1-2 heading of most core moments of engagement for your user
- Note down other key moments
- Place notes in order the the user would likely experience on their journey
Touchpoint
A touchpoint is any time a potential customer or customer comes in contact with your brand– before, during, or after they purchase something from you.
Touchpoint are any interaction including non physical interaction that alter the way a users fees about your created product, service, brand or business. To improve interactions with our users the key starting point is to understand what those interaction are and where they will take place. Having a clear understanding will determine the effect that improvements and change made to interaction have on the product.
Touch points that customers expect:
– Chris Ridson (Design Director of Adaptive Path), suggests that touchpoint should provide a customer with the following interaction types:
- Appropriate – That context of interaction and tone of interaction meet the needs of the user
- Relevant – That the function performed by the interaction meets the expected requirements
- Meaningful – The interaction was perceived as important and reasonable
- Endearing – The interaction created a relationship with the users
Real content Drives Real Design
How user read on the web
Its statistically proven that users of the web tend to scan pages picking out individuals words or sentences in comparison to reading a piece of text word for word like they would in a book.
People read paper – Jakob Nielsen
Below shows the title of one of usability expert Jakob Nielsesn earliest articles on writing for the web.
How Users Read on the Web
The first paragraph:
They don’t.
This example shows how as a user you tend to scan for over the text that is more obvious on the page before you navigate to the less bold smaller text.
From an article I found by eye-tracking studies by Dejan Marketing, they stated that people read word by word online just 16% (1 in 5) of the time which is the same percentage Nielsen had stated in his findings.
Because the number of users that scan webpages is significantly high compared to the number of users that read word for word, it’s important to employ “scannable text” when creating context for web. We can do this by using:
- Highlight keywords (hypertext link – typeface variations, colours
- Meaningful sub headings
- Bulleted short lists
- One idea per paragraph
- Inverted pyramid style (start with the conclusion
- half the word out than conventional writing
This article below features some content that I found to be relatable to this weeks lecture. It explained the reasonings why some context may be overlooked compared to other pieces and ways you can approve on this.
Typography @ page level:
It’s important to make reading your context enjoyable for your reader by easing the them into your piece of text and ensuring that what you have presented is easy to read in terms of typeface considerations of size, colour and font style as well as the amount of context and that way you have written and constructed pieces of text. We want to make reading for our users as appealing as possible to ensure that they enjoy the subject you are showcasing to them.
How do we read?
Reading on paper (light reflected off paper
Computers (don’t reflect, project)
= Light hitting eye making you tired quicker
Rules
Some rules that we can follow and keep in mind when it comes to creating and pursuing to create pieces on context.
- Comfortable/reasonable size 15-25px
- Leading consideration (120-145% point size)
- Legible typeface (important for an enjoyable read)
- Focus on body copy
- Maintain measure (45-76 characters)
- Clear noticeable headings and subheadings
- placing info up front
- plain language
Users Seek
Our users will seek to trust us with the content that we present to them, meaning that we must ensure that the content that we offer to them is sited, researched and trust worthy. They also expect quick deliver of information, meaning they don’t want or expect to access a site and have to go search more than 3 clicks to find their source of interest.
Upcoming tasks
Paul reminded us that our upcoming critique was due in week 7 and for this he is expecting a PDF presentation of our designs of our health application so far. He has requested us to present the following:
- Logo/Brand
- Brand Guidelines
- Sketches – complete
- Wireframes – complete (lo-fi)
- Initial mockups
To conclude this week lecture I found it hard one to get through as funny enough it contained so much content to get through but in the end it is all insightful in its own way and I’m glad that we got to cover so much in this weeks class to give more of an understanding on how we go about the content were given for projects.